Twenty women will compete in the Paris 2024 format
From one set of medals at Tokyo 2020 to two at Paris 2024, the Boulder & Lead climbers still have two disciplines to contend with if they want to stand on an Olympic podium.
For the women’s Boulder & Lead competition there is a host of climbers who either have Olympic experience – some even have some hardware to show for their efforts in Japan last time around – or medals from both of the two individual disciplines or in the current Boulder & Lead format that will be on show.
One person that ticks all those boxes and hard to look past for another medal is Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret. Quite simply, the stats back it up. Garnbret won gold medals before Tokyo 2020, won the first women’s Sport Climbing gold at Tokyo 2020, and she hasn’t stopped winning gold since.
Since 2016, Garnbret has won 53 gold’s, 17 silver and five bronze in either the IFSC World Cup or World Championships. She won gold in the Boulder & Lead at the 2023 World Championships which booked her ticket to a second Games. In 2024 as a warmup to the Olympics Garnbret entered four World Cup’s, and you guessed it – two Boulder golds, two Lead golds. Will the Slovenian be the first to ever defend a Sport Climbing Olympic title? By the time the closing ceremony rolls around we will have that answer.
Joining Garnbret once again on the Olympic stage will be teammate Mia Krampl. Since Tokyo Krampl has won silver in the Boulder & Lead format at the European Continental Championships in Munich 2022 and in the ‘23 and ’24 seasons has started to become a more regular World Cup finalist in both disciplines.
With Olympic experience, and an Olympic medal, is Japan’s Nonaka Miho who won silver at Tokyo 2020. Missing out on a ticket at the World Championship, and also coming runner-up at the Asian qualifier, Nonaka came through the Olympic Qualifier Series (OQS) route with a fourth-place finish in Shanghai and a second place in Budapest confirming her spot.
Filling the Japanese two-person quota is Mori Ai. Mori actually booked her spot before teammate Nonaka by taking bronze at the World Championships in Boulder & Lead. In that same event, Mori beat Garnbret to the Lead world title and gold medal. Known more for her Lead climbing, Mori has tasted success in the run up to Paris by taking silver at the Lead World Cup in Innsbruck before a gold in Chamonix – her final event before the Games. This will be Mori’s first Olympic Games and expectation will be high for the Japanese team after winning silver with Nonaka and bronze with Noguchi Akiyo at Tokyo 2020.
There are two other nations who filled their quota and filled it with one climber who has Olympic experience and one Games newcomer – those countries are USA and Italy.
Brooke Raboutou was determined to represent the USA again in an Olympics, and at the OQS it showed. Raboutou twice finished agonisingly close to Paris – she finished fourth at the World Championships and second at the Pan American Games – and in the OQS a laser focus finally got her that ticket she so badly wanted. Raboutou made no mistakes and won both the Shanghai and Budapest events.
Finishing ahead of Raboutou at the Pan American Games was teammate and long-term friend, Natalia Grossman. From 2021 up until her final World Cup before the Games – Salt Lake City 2024 - Grossman has won ten Boulder World Cup gold’s and the 2021 Boulder World Championship. But it’s not just Boulder. Grossman also has multiple medals in Lead including at the same 2021 World Championships. While she hasn’t managed a gold in Lead just yet, her silver and bronze medal count bodes well for the two-discipline medal on offer.
For Italy, Laura Rogora has the experience and Camilla Moroni the newcomer. Both came through the OQS.
Rogora has had some success in France previously. She was third at the European qualifier in Laval, was second in her last World Cup before Paris 2024 in the Lead discipline in Briançon and won the Chamonix World Cup in 2021.
While Rogora is thought of more as a Lead climber, her teammate Moroni could be described as the opposite with her successes and strengths seen at the Boulder events. She won a World Championships Boulder silver medal in 2021 and as a warmup for the OQS - where she finished ninth in Shanghai and 13thin Budapest – also took silver at the World Cup in Keqiao, China.
The other three climbers in Paris with Olympic experience are Austria’s Jessica Pilz, Australia’s Oceania Mackenzie and South Korea’s Seo Chaehyun.
Pilz was one of the first three climbers to get their ticket after finishing second at the 2023 World Championships in the Boulder & Lead format. Pilz has been using the World Cup to test her form and has solid results for her efforts. In her home World Cup of Innsbruck, she finished fourth in Lead and fifth in Boulder. She made the podium in Chamonix with a silver in the Lead competition.
Mackenzie has been splitting her time in 2024 between the Boulder and Lead World Cups in preparation for the Games. She has also been splitting her time between Europe and Australia making the most of training in both. Mackenzie made Tokyo 2020 through the continental qualifier and took the same path for Paris 2024 to become a two-time Olympian.
Seo’s route to Paris was through the OQS. She has a continental title in 2022 in the Boulder & Lead format and faired very well at the OQS by finishing second in Shanghai and fifth in Budapest to confirm her second Games trip. Seo won Lead bronze at the World Championships in 2023 and more recently once again took a bronze in her final World Cup before Paris in Innsbruck, again in Lead.
Home nation France, Great Britain and China all secured two spots in the women’s Boulder & Lead, and all six climbers will be making their Olympic debut.
The French crowds will undoubtedly be cheering madly for Oriane Bertone and Zélia Avezou.
Bertone secured her spot through the European qualifier in Laval following a sixth placed finish at the 2023 World Championships in the Boulder & Lead. She did however take silver in the standalone Boulder discipline at that event. Bertone also took a silver at the Boulder World Cup in Salt Lake City at the start of the 2024 season.
Avezou made her way through the OQS by finishing eighth in Shanghai and 12th in Budapest. In her final World Cup before Paris she finished just off the podium in fourth in Chamonix for Lead, while her Boulder career to date boasts two Youth Worlds gold – in 2021 and 2022.
Great British pair Erin McNeice and Molly Thompson-Smith both came through the OQS route. For McNeice, 2024 was really a breakthrough season. She began the year with a fifth-place finish at the Lead World Cup in Keqiao before following that up quickly with another fifth, but this time at the Boulder World Cup in Wujiang. Two third place finished in the OQS events ensured she signed her Paris 2024 ticket.
Thompson-Smith suffered a very bad ankle break in 2023 and at times found it hard to find her form. Making the final of the Lead competition in Briançon in 2023 gave her the boast she needed to take a run at the OQS events – and it paid off. A 13th in Shanghai and 11th in Budapest was enough to ensure she could call herself an Olympian.
Maybe a surprise, China’s Zhang Yuetong timed her first ever senior gold medal to perfection. Zhang came through a strong Asian qualifier ahead of climbers like Japan’s Nonaka and the legendary Kim Jain of South Korea to take her maiden victory, and with it a Paris 2024 ticket. The Chinese climber does have both Boulder and Lead medals at Youth level and also a senior Lead silver from the World Cup in Chamonix in 2019.
Teammate Zhilu Luo has been on the podium at a World Cup before, for Boulder in Brixen, Italy in 2022, but after finishing fifth at the Asian qualifier she has been laser focused in 2024 on a spot in Paris. A bronze medal in Boulder at the World Cup Keqiao before a silver in Lead at the World Cup Wujiang led nicely into the OQS where she secured a ticket with a seventh in Shanghai and a fourth in Budapest.
The three climbers completing the lineup will all be the sole representatives for their nations – Ukraine’s Ievgeniia Kazbekova, Germany’s Lucia Dörffel and South Africa’s Lauren Mukheibir.
Kazbekova’s route to Paris was via the OQS. She finished in fourth at the European qualifier in Laval but a sixth-place finish in Shanghai and an eighth-place finish in Budapest was more than enough for an Olympic spot.
Dörffel also followed the same path as the Ukrainian. A sixth in Laval meant targeting the OQS. The German warmed up with a seventh-place finish in Boulder at the Salt Lake City World Cup before a tenth in Shanghai and ninth in Budapest confirmed her Paris ticket, and that was despite a foot injury that the German says will require surgery after the Games.
South African Mukheibir secured her place through the African qualifier event in her homeland. Her success has been at the continental level boasting a clean sweep of golds at the 2021 Continental Championships, she won all three disciplines - Boulder, Lead and Speed. She does have some multi-sport Games experience after competing in the World Games in 2022, but the Olympics will be another step up again.
With Garnbret’s participation confirmed, and the form she is once again in, there could be a double-golden climber by the end of Paris 2024 if you follow the statistics and form guides. But this is the Olympic Games, and there are another 19 women out to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The action will begin with the Boulder round of the semi-final stage for the women’s Boulder & Lead climbers on Tuesday 6 August at 10:00 (UTC+2:00).